Ink Painting ∼ Subtractive Process and Methodology

SUBTRACTIVE INK PAINTING PROCESS

My ink paintings are made with a process that starts by randomly brushing, spraying, pouring and flicking ink across paper, then letting it dry. At this stage it looks something like this →

Later I submerge the paper in a flat developing basin of water, the water is about two inches deep; I work on the painting with a stiff bush gradually subtracting the ink.

This is a slow process, the paper may remain submerged for several days at a time.

The innitial application of ink is very fast, sometimes a matter of seconds, so all the time and painting work itself is in the removal of the paint. It is more like painting in reverse, white on black, except lifting permanent black ink from white paper is an extremely delicate process, as the paper surface is fragile, it can tear, or break up into fibers, and is often so stained that the lightest it can go is a mid tone grey. So what I am getting at is that, I have to work with what is there in the original splatters and make that randomness into something - it feels a lot like I am an archaeologist carefully excavating images that are buried in the layers of ink.

Working this way makes my hands turn white and wrinkly from being in the water for long periods of time. I change the water only when it is too dirty to see what I am doing.

At a certain point an image emerges from the ink, like a premonition becoming real, in a nuanced way, I am coaxing it out, like the painting is opening it's eyes from being asleep, not necessarily representing something specific but expressing abstractly in its own terms. There is a certain moment when I am looking down into the water at form, light and space.

The painting to the right has been through this process. Although it is not the same as the above (because I do not have before and after pictures) it started out looking similar →

Improvised Paintings in Ink on Paper (Automatink)

A thirteen year cycle from 1993-2006. Starting with New Years Eve Paintings (which Bittleston continues), and culminating with the Dream Collaboration paintings Residency in 2006.

Most active in 1997 and 2003/2004 when Bittleston made hundreds of ink paintings, more...

Influenced by "lead pouring" (Bleigiessen), East Asian Ink wash painting and traditional watercolor techniques, which Bittleston studied with Edith Smith and by notoriously going though every art book in Stanford Library in alpabetical order.

Each of these works is a unique improvisation, in a medium that stains the paper on contact. As Bittleston puts it: "Ink painting has the immediacy, and vulnerability of performance. Each work is an adventure, the risk is to set out without knowing and let my hands do the thinking. At the heart of exploration is the allure of the unknown. It is a game of flirting with future. The paper is the future and the ink is the past, their interaction is the present.
There is a moment before I make a mark when anything could happen, I imagine that same limitlessness was there before the big bang, as god took a breath before saying 'let there be light'... then, as ink meets paper, the future is happening, faster than I can take it all in, I am just observing as the painting paints itself."

These works bring together two distinct elements. One of risk and spontaneous expression, the other of controlled planning and meticulous detail. In the mature works from 2003 and 2004 it is hard to tell the difference. Was that abstract shape a fast gestural splatter, or was it obsessively built up from a thousand tiny brush strokes?

Bittleston was familiar with Japanese technique of Kirifuki/Fukibokashi and misted ink with a Mouth Atomizer - found in the varnishing section of the art store, it is the "Medieval" equivalent of a spray can, you blow into one end of two small tubes that meet in a right angle - this device is hard to use and results are often unpredictable, which probably appealed to Bittleston, he wrote that he likes "the idea of painting with his breath".

Bittleston's predeterminate counterpoint to the unpredictable spraying was replicating spray textures by fastidiously painting each dot of the spray by hand. This method of reducing the ink paintings down to points, like pixels or particles, gave rise to some of his strongest work that juxtaposes broad, wet brush strokes that seem to be wielded by the hand of chaos itself, with purposefully building up transparent layers into fine textures and hard edges that melt into soft gradients.

Bittleston's concept of deconstructing improvisation, by slowing it down, is continued in the multi-year dot drawings of "82 Dreamscapes".

NOTE TO SELF: the following is pasted from the old mbdc, this could be edited and maybe be of interest...:
Misha Bittleston's black and white works are conceived as ink drawings. The process for creating these demands both control and abandonment of control as if to the will of the painting itself. These paintings are created using watercolor techniques without white pigment. These techniques require concentrated spontaneity, as India ink on paper, unlike watercolor, is permanent and staining, leaving no room for "errors". The challenge of each painting is dependant on harnessing those aspects of the painting that go their own way. Just as some novelists say of their characters that it is important to let them have a mind of their own, so, the unpredictable and accidental aspects of this process often result in the most exciting elements of a composition. The mastery of this process requires the ability to be simultaneously in control and in surrender.